1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an image data recording/reproducing apparatus including a superimposing function. More specifically, the present invention is directed to an image information processing apparatus where both image data and character data, e.g., a title, a comment and the like which are to be superimposed with the image data, are recorded on a recording medium during a recording operation, and the image data is synthesized with the character data in a proper way during a reproducing operation.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, when image data is recorded on a recording medium such as a floppy disk and a video tape while being superimposed with the messages, e.g., a title, a comment and so on, and reproduced, the message data is superimposed on the image data by employing a superimposing unit during the recording operation on the recording medium.
In such image data recording/reproducing apparatuses, the following problem may exist. That is, since the message data is superimposed on the image data during the recording operation on the recording medium, only the message data cannot be released or deleted from the reproduced picture during the reproducing operation.
Also in the known electronic still camera employing a video floppy disk, a queue track for recording the ID data is additionally provided on the floppy disk having a track for recording the image data. As a result, the message data can be recorded on the floppy disk without being superimposed with the image data in the electronic still camera. However, the storage capacity of a storage device which is capable of storing message data of the queue track is very small, i.e. about 90 bits in respect to each image data recorded on the floppy disk.
As one solution method for the above-described conventional problems, the message data may be independently recorded on the image data recording track (16k bytes) of the floppy disk, and both the image data and message data may be synthesized in a proper way during the reproducing operation. However, this solution may cause other difficulties. That is, very complex supervision and control operations are required for the data recorded on the image data recording track and the recording/reproducing head.